The face of bimodal bilingualism: grammatical markers in American Sign Language are produced when bilinguals speak to English monolinguals

Bimodal bilinguals, fluent in a signed and a spoken language, provide unique insight into the nature of syntactic integration and language control. We investigated whether bimodal bilinguals who are conversing with English monolinguals produce American Sign Language (ASL) grammatical facial expressions to accompany parallel syntactic structures in spoken English. In ASL, raised eyebrows mark conditionals, and furrowed eyebrows mark wh-questions; the grammatical brow movement is synchronized with the manual onset of the clause. Bimodal bilinguals produced more ASL-appropriate facial expressions than did nonsigners and synchronized their expressions with the onset of the corresponding English clauses. This result provides evidence for a dual-language architecture in which grammatical information can be integrated up to the level of phonological implementation. Overall, participants produced more raised brows than furrowed brows, which can convey negative affect. Bimodal bilinguals suppressed but did not completely inhibit ASL facial grammar when it conflicted with conventional facial gestures. We conclude that morphosyntactic elements from two languages can be articulated simultaneously and that complete inhibition of the nonselected language is difficult.     

Help Me Play! Parental Behaviors,Child Temperament,and Preschool Peer Play

Social competence is a critical developmental milestone for preschoolers. Because play is the primary activity through which preschoolers interact socially with peers, it serves as an excellent indicator of social competence. The development of social competence in preschoolers is complex and multifaceted. In order to capture this complexity, we used Belsky’s differential susceptibility hypothesis as a framework for examining the contributions of child temperament and parenting styles in the prediction of peer interactive play behaviors. Using parent ratings of a sample of 44 preschool-age children, we hypothesized that child temperament (specifically, reactivity and regulation) acts as a susceptibility factor in the relationship between parenting styles (authoritarian and authoritative) and child peer play behaviors (disruptive and interactive). Our findings indicated that child reactivity moderated the relationship between authoritarian parenting style and both play outcomes, suggesting that reactivity serves as a potential susceptibility factor. More specifically, children with high reactivity who had more authoritarian parents demonstrated higher levels of disruptive play and lower levels of interactive play. Regulation did not act as a susceptibility factor in our sample. Findings are discussed in terms of implications for practice and in terms of an approach that considers temperament (specifically reactivity) and parenting behaviors in preschool assessment and intervention efforts. Additionally, we discuss how our findings partially support the differential susceptibility hypothesis.     

First‐hand sensory experience plays a limited role in children's early understanding of seeing and hearing as sources of knowledge: Evidence from typically hearing and deaf children

One early‐developing component of theory of mind is an understanding of the link between sensory perception and knowledge formation. We know little about the extent to which children's first‐hand sensory experiences drive the development of this understanding, as most tasks capturing this early understanding target vision, with less attention paid to the other senses. In this study, 64 typically hearing children (M_age = 4.0 years) and 21 orally educated deaf children (M_age = 5.44 years) were asked to identify which of two informants knew the identity of a toy animal when each had differing perceptual access to the animal. In the ‘seeing’ condition, one informant saw the animal and the other did not; in the ‘hearing’ condition, one informant heard the animal and the other did not. For both hearing and deaf children, there was no difference between performance on hearing and seeing trials, but deaf children were delayed in both conditions. Further, within both the hearing and deaf groups, older children outperformed younger children on these tasks, indicating that there is a developmental progression. Taken together, the pattern of results suggests that experiences other than first‐hand sensory experiences drive children's developing understanding that sensory perception is associated with knowledge.     

Mandatory Cancer Risk Warnings on Alcoholic Beverages: What Are the Ethical Issues?

The link between alcohol consumption and cancer is well established, but public awareness of the risk remains low. Mandated warning labels have been suggested as a way of ensuring “informed choice” about alcohol consumption. In this article we explore various ethical issues that may arise in connection with cancer warning labels on alcoholic beverages; in particular we highlight the potentially questionable autonomy of alcohol consumption decisions (either with or without labels) and consider the implications if the autonomy of drinking behavior is substantially compromised. Our discussion demonstrates the need for the various ethical issues to be considered and addressed in any decision to mandate cancer warning labels.     

Generalization of the negativity effect to self-attributions

In 1979 Reeder and Brewer reported that people make stronger attributions for negative behaviors than for positive ones, following Hastorf and Cantril's statement that people are motivated to maintain positive self-views. The present study tested whether 67 participants would make stronger self-attributions for negative behaviors than for positive ones by having them indicate the number of times that they had to engage in a specific behavior before it would become a trait they possess. Analysis confirmed that participants make stronger self-attributions for negative behaviors than for positive behaviors.     

I won’t do it! Self-prediction,moral obligation and moral deliberation

This paper considers the question of whether predictions of wrongdoing are relevant to our moral obligations. After giving an analysis of ‘won’t’ claims (i.e., claims that an agent won’t Φ), the question is separated into two different issues: firstly, whether predictions of wrongdoing affect our objective moral obligations, and secondly, whether self-prediction of wrongdoing can be legitimately used in moral deliberation. I argue for an affirmative answer to both questions, although there are conditions that must be met for self-prediction to be appropriate in deliberation. The discussion illuminates an interesting and significant tension between agency and prediction.     

Caring for Aging Parents: The Influence of Family Coping,Spirituality/Religiosity,and Hope on the Marital Satisfaction of Family Caregivers

The goal of this study was to gain a more complete understanding of the marital satisfaction of family caregivers based on a strength-based framework of family resiliency. Previous research has identified a relationship between the caregiving experience and coping, spirituality/religiosity, and hope, but no study to date has investigated the effect of those three variables on the marital satisfaction of family caregivers. We hypothesized that family caregivers who are spiritual/religious, hopeful, and use effective family coping strategies would experience greater marital satisfaction. A hierarchical linear regression analyzing data from 191 family caregivers supported the hypotheses. Implications for clinicians are discussed.